We hope you’re all doing well and managing this crazy winter alright. It certainly has been a rough couple of months on the farm with all the snow and ice. The animals are cranky about this weather, and so are we. But…it’s the end of February so that means it’s seed starting season…which means that Spring is hopefully right around the corner!!! Yay!! Oh, and the sun is currently shining outside, even if we have several inches of snow on the ground still.
Finally playing in the dirt again
This week we’ve started onions, shallots, eggplants and Brussels sprouts. All of these plants require a lot of root setup, so the extra month is necessary. Gotta say, it was nice to get my hands dirty again!
CSA 2019 – going to be a good one!
We also sent out our first round of CSA emails to existing customers and recent inquiries. So that made us happy. We even had several responses immediately, which was even better!! Last year, we only had 8 subscribers to our CSA, since it was our first year and we didn’t want to oversell. But this year, we’re upping it to 12, and we’re super excited about it.
If you’d like information about this year’s CSA, feel free to email us at archiesacres@gmail.com. Or fill out the form below.
We hope you’re having a warmer Spring than we are. At this very moment it’s alternating between hail and snow outside and all the animals are upset about it.
Even the cats and Archie are mad…at us, as if this weather is our fault. But Spring in the Midwest can be like this so there’s no point in complaining about it. Cold weather is a great excuse to take some time to read a book, cleanup your house, watching a movie or just relax. It’s actually a pleasant excuse to just take a break! And that’s awesome… unless you have crops to plant. We currently have 100+ potted seedlings hanging out in front of every South, East & West facing window in our home. Plus usually by this time we would have planted potatoes, onions, leafy greens, and peas in the garden but the ground is too frozen to get the potatoes in and too wet for the others.
Plants congregating in front of our kitchen window
Getting a little stressful at this point…
It’s a major bummer. Time seems like it’s flying by and farmer’s market season is getting closer and closer. It’s stressful to feel so far behind so early in the season! We’re hoping to get these little plants in the ground at the end of next week. All that stress aside, the plants are happy in their current situation, but would be happier if they were outside getting pollinated by honey bees instead of an electric toothbrush. Oh which reminds me…we’re very worried about what this weather is doing to our bee hives. The cold Spring/extended winter could be disastrous and it’s too cold open up the hives to check on them. We don’t want to release any remaining heat in their hives and endanger them further. We’re staying hopeful though.
Hello from snow drifty Pearl City! It’s been a while since we’ve last checked in. So let’s see, since I last wrote on Jan 15, we took a week long vacation to Mexico to celebrate our anniversary, took 4 cats to the vet for a mini-cold/flu outbreak, started seeds for early spring planting and added a few new products to our Etsy store! Most importantly, we’ve been busy enjoying the last weeks of a life with not THAT much to do.
Vacation sights!
We got a sizable snowfall last night, so the chickens are miserable, the dogs are happy, the humans have sore backs and the goats/sheep are busy making little walkways around the pasture, which is very cute. Archie, per usual, is the happiest dog ever!
Snow Floof!
He’s been running laps around the property all morning. And if we didn’t have 2+ foot high snow drifts all over the place, I’d run around more with him!
Our Etsy store is doing pretty well. We added a hops candle, some organic paw wax and a couple new bath salts.
Yesterday, I toyed around with making our own lotion bars, which worked out really well. I used a teakwood scent and they not only work well, but they smell great! Now I just have to find a better mold than the ice cube tray I made them in. Ha. Lotion bars are pretty cool little things though. They’re basically a bar of lotion. And the Shea butter dissolved quickly into the skin and isn’t messy. How am I just hearing about these?! We’ll list them soon. Because you’re going to want to try these out.
The seeds we started are all plants that need some extra TLC in pots indoors for a few months, like grapes, pear and apple trees, small pepper plants that we plan to keep exclusively in pots on our porch all summer, and onions, which will need several weeks to grow before transplanting in the garden. We have basically converted our laundry room into a germination room. It’s a teeny tiny jungle in there! But so far so good!
All in all, no complaints here. We plan to finalize our CSA sign-up by March 1st, so expect to receive more materials soon.
We have finally crunched the numbers, finalized our seed orders and planned our gardens and fields, so now it’s time to announce that we are doing our very first CSA sign-up this year!
What is a CSA?
CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture and it’s the best way for farmers and consumers to partner to help farms match production to their markets. CSA subscribers purchase, up front, a share in the farm’s growing season in exchange for produce over a set number of weeks of the season. Large farms are capable of doing a drop-off every single week of a spring/summer season, however, small farms like us don’t have the means to produce that much. So most small farms, especially 1st timers, keep the delivery to a couple times a month. Typically, there is a drop-off site or sites where CSA members pick up their weekly shares each week/month, or they come directly to the farm.
2018 CSA number crunching.
Since this is our first year running a CSA we are only doing a signup for once or twice a month produce deliveries. Each delivery will contain $30 worth of fresh, seasonal, organic produce delivered to a location near you. Our season will start Saturday, May 26th and go until Saturday, October 27, a full-season will be $300 for 11 weeks, delivered twice a month or a half season will be $165 for 6 weeks, delivered once a month. Every box will include farm fresh eggs, but otherwise the produce and herbs will change depending on that week’s crop.
Caribbean Red Habanero and Peach Hot Sauce
We will also include some jellies, jams, hot sauces, salsa etc from time to time as well. A small sample of this season’s crops include 5 varieties of lettuce, 3 varieties of spinach, 3 varieties of eggplant, 15 varieties of peppers (hot and bell), 15 varieties of tomatoes, 3 varieties of apples, Bartlett pears, Jubilee peaches, Bing cherries, Detroit dark red beets, kohlrabi, 7 varieties of radishes, 7 varieties of carrots, Concord grapes, broccoli, delicata squash, acorn squash, pumpkins, 3 varieties of onions, 4 varieties of garlic, shallots, zucchini, cauliflower, purple and green brussel sprouts, 2 varieties of tomatillos, 3 varieties of green beans, black raspberries, blueberries, red raspberries, watermelon, snow peas etc…the list is long. We are really looking forward to the upcoming season and are soooo ready for Spring!
Farm Fresh Produce can now be delivered to you!
This is going to be a lot of fun. We’re so excited to get the ball rolling on this. It will be nice to know that every single thing we grow will find a home. The 2018 season is going to be great!
If you are interested in joining our CSA, drop us a line!
We’re super excited to announce that Archie’s Acres LLC has finally opened a store on the online craft market, Etsy! (The link to our store is shared at the end of this post)
As our last blog post mentioned, the process for selling canned salsa, giardineria, bourbon pears etc online will take a bit, but in the meantime we have a variety of bath/shower products, dried herbs, honey and crafts for sale! You know, in case you’re looking for Christmas gifts…
Our Oatmeal, Milk, Lavender, Rose Bath Salts
Our Sinus Relief Shower Melts.
We will be adding new products regularly. We have 3 new products waiting in the wings as I type this that will be added this week! (They just need to be tested (by us) then proven to be excellent (also, by us).
Maybe you’ve wondered why we don’t have an online store yet. And why we aren’t selling our awesome canned products yet. Well it’s not because we don’t want to, it’s because we can’t. Yet.
If you follow our Instagram feed, you’ve probably noticed that we love to can our produce and have really gotten adventurous with our recipes. It’s funny how so much changes in a year. A year ago I found the idea of canning to be terrifying. Terrifying for it’s tediousness, it’s time-consuming steps and, oh yeah, that whole botulism food poisoning thing. It took some internal cheerleading but we took the initial plunge into the world of canning and it turned out to be a ton of fun! We’ve more than got the hang of it and we love it! We’re always on a search for new and fun canning ideas, we’ll can pretty much anything at this point.
Guinness Stout Jelly.
Many of our friends and customers ask about purchasing our canned goods. And after some quick research we learned that we had a ton of paperwork to do before we could even think about selling our products online. (Well, that’s not true, we think about selling our products all the time. Ha)
Our dried red pepper flakes.
Rules, Rules, Rules!
The Illinois Cottage Food law allows us to sell some canned goods directly to customers at farmer’s markets, but that is it. Online sales or sales to retailers are strictly prohibited. So our friends and family have been really benefiting from all these rules. Haha.
Our peach habanero hot sauce.
Our vanilla bourbon pears.
Homemade Chicago style giardiniera.
Next up, hot sauces, giardaneria, Bloody Mary mix, bourbon pears, salsa verde etc…has to go through and pass a rigorous process before it’s ever sold.
All our recipes must be be pH tested by an accredited lab and then submitted to a “process authority” with the pH test results. This person reviews the recipe, test results and steps we detail for producing the canned good and sends back to us an “official” process. We then register that process with the FDA. Each product and each variation of that product (change in container size, container closure, recipe adjustment, change in commercial kitchen location, etc.) MUST go through all these steps.
Safety is important to us
The process is very involved. But it makes sense, farms and businesses need to be required to prove that they’re doing things the healthy and clean way. People can become very sick or even die. So we get it. And appreciate the process. We just want it to move a little quicker so we can share our delicious goodies! We’re shooting for early January. Obviously, the timeline isn’t completely up to us. We will create an Etsy store and also list our products in the Shop page of our website. Stay tuned!
Hello from Archie’s Acres. We know it’s been a while since we’ve posted but we’ve been busy preparing the garden and our critters for winter!
The first order of business was to remove all remaining produce from all plants before the first frost, which was about 3 weeks ago. We still had a surprising amount of peppers, tomatoes, tomatillos, zucchini and cucumbers which was a pleasant surprise!
A portion of our last harvest for the season
The produce that didn’t make the cut for humans were given to the chickens and the goats, so everybody on the farm won. Especially the chickens.
Then we had to remove all remnants of the tomato and pepper plants. Leaving them around would invite disease to the soil that would effect our productivity next year. It’s a tedious job, but the reward is being able to have a big bonfire with all the dried plants. So that’s fun!
In the next week or so, we will then spread compost and chicken manure onto the garden before the first snow to help rejuvenate the soil. Our current chicken coop setup is basically that of a giant litter box. We filled the entire interior of our coop with sand and ag-lime (aka crushed limestone). This allowed us to scoop out chicken droppings with a manure form (think giant cat litter scoop) to collect for fertilizer. It’s working wonderfully.
As for the critters, we moved and re-positioned the goats’ and Tilly’s
The goats were not very helpful while we were trying to move their shelter
shelter to face the south east in order to protect them from the harsh winter winds from the west and the north. And we covered their favorite hangout area with pine chips to create a barrier between the cold ground and their feet and we put a fancy new coat on Tilly!
Tilly looks fabulous in her new coat
Winter Coop Preparations
We’ve been collecting all fallen leaves and shuttling them into the coop. We’ll also add grass clippings, pine savings and shredded paper. We’re aiming to get about 3-4 inches of material covering the entire coop floor. It’s called the “deep litter method” and worked well for us last year. Basically, the deep layer of organic material absorbs the chicken dropping and slowly composts throughout the winter. The material on the floor provides some insulation from the cold ground, and as it breaks down (composts) it releases some heat into the coop. Added bonus – in the spring, we have great fertilizer waiting for us when we clean out the coop. So far we only have about an inch deep layer throughout; a few of our large maple trees are stubbornly holding onto their leaves. We’re really hoping they drop them before the first snow or we may have some damaged trees!
So as you can see, we’ve been busy! As this season winds down, I promise to post more. I mean, what else am I going to do with all the free time we have? 😉
We told you last week about all the creative ways we used the pears and apples coming out of our orchard. But now we’re focusing on our ripening hops. We have Chinook, Cascade and Centennial varieties reaching maturity.
We grew hops – now what?
The first step is to cut down the bines. They climb 14+ feet up ropes that we attached to our garage. Then we take each hop cone off the bine and lay it out on a screen to dry for 3 days. A few times a day, we fluff and move the hops on the screen to make sure they dry evenly. Bonus – our hands smell like hops!
You don’t want to let them dry for longer than that because the longer they are out, the more they oxidize (and lose their hoppy goodness).
We’ve been weighing out the hops and packing them into vacuum-sealed bags to freeze for use in future batches of home-brewed beer. But we’ve also been grinding them up and using them to scent our homemade candles! We have a cascade hop scented candle that is out of this world! If you love the smell of fresh hops, you’ll love it! In the next few weeks, we plan to have some of our candles available on our Shop page. They’d make great Christmas gifts for any beer lover!
Our plan is to add a few plants every year until we have enough for ourselves and to share with other beer brewing nerds. Eventually maybe we’ll even sell to some of the great craft breweries in the area.
It is harvest time here at Archie’s Acres since our pears and apples are all ready this week. And like most plants on this farm, when they’re ready we have to be ready to pick them. This farm is filled with hungry opportunists looking for a quick meal. And our orchard is DELICIOUS!!
This orchard came with the farm so we’re not entirely sure what kind of pears and apples we have. Our guess, based on their soft, sweetness is that they are Bartlett pears. Since they all went ripe on Saturday we’ve been frantically trying to eat, use or preserve them.
We made a cider.
And Pear Apple Sauce!
And the chickens get the mushy ones!
It’s a win win win!
We’ve identified 2 varieties of trees in our orchard as Golden Delicious and Jonathan apples. The Golden Delicious apples are great for snacking. While the Jonathan apples are perfect for pies since they’re quite tart. We have 2 other varieties of apples that we’re still not 100% sure about. We’re using them for apple sauce, pies and the pear apple hard cider that we made yesterday!!
Hard cider ready for fermentation
This is our first go at hard cider and we can’t wait to try it!! If it works, we’ll be sure to share the recipe with everyone.
We’ll be at the Rockford City Market today. Please note the hours have changed and the market closes at 7:30 now; it’s too dark for it to stay open until 8:30.
Also, if you’re interested in participating in our CSA next year (farm fresh goodies delivered 1 or 2x/month), please complete the short form on our Shop page so we can tailor next year’s seed order.
Life has been great lately at Archie’s Acres and we have some fun updates from the farm.
Weather is slightly more cooperative
We’re happy to report that the rains have finally given us some time to dry out. That said, we still get a little rain almost daily, but the 1-4 inch torrential rainstorms have slowed and the plants are finally looking and feeling healthy. Aaaaaand because of that it’s been a real tomato and pepper party over here!
Which leads me to happily announce that we have begun selling produce to The Log Cabin Restaurant in Galena, IL! How exciting is that?! It’s such an honor! We’re over the moon about it!
Farmer’s markets are fun!
Farmers market life has been great. We’re enjoying our time at the Rockford City Market every 2nd and 4th Friday and we’re loving our guest vendor spots at the Glenwood Sunday Market in Chicago! The next time we’ll be at the Glenwood Sunday Market is September 24th. We meet so many amazing people at these events and we love being able to learn from the vendors and local farmers around us.
It’s great when friends stop by to see us at the market! Bernie and Nancy it was so good to see you!
Exciting development for next year
We’ve also decided to begin a CSA program starting next Spring! For anyone unfamiliar, CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. Members sign up to receive a box containing fresh, organic, seasonal goodies from our farm. Once or twice a month (depending on your preference), we will deliver it to a convenient pick-up location.
We’ve created a form in the “Shop” section of our website where you can add your information and we’ll email you when we finalize plans. In the meantime, we’d still like to share our chicken and quail eggs with people after the Farmers Market season is over. But that’s all a work-in-progress.
Critters everywhere
Tilly thinks the bed is meant for her
Our farm pets are doing well. Moose is growing by the literal second! He’s as big as Archie right now and he’s not even 4 months old! He’s fitting in with the goats and Tilly very well.
On that note, Tilly is a diva. She demands treats and pets and she regularly steals Moose’s dog bed. She shouts at us from the pasture every time she sees us. It’s hard to believe that she’s only 4 months old (born April 21st) because she’s such a presence on the farm already that we can’t imagine life without her!
Another hen has hatched a couple of babies in the last week. She has 2 beautiful little chicks and she’s momming like a champ! Just today I watched her teach her babies about the automatic waterer that we have setup in front of their coop. It was really sweet to watch.
